ABADRAFI - Rendezvous with Mubarak Begum Sahiba
July 20th, 2008
5TH July, 2008 will be remembered by music lovers in Hyderabad as a day of revival of the vintage music of the hfm. For nearly six months now, we have been trying to organize a grand musical show and also invite some well known playback singer of the yesteryears to Hyderabad. The closest we came to was the name of Mubarak Begum Sahiba and our good friend Samarjit Acharjee was in continuous contact with her. Either the glorious singer with the golden voice was not available when we had wanted to organize a show or we were preoccupied with our normal lives and thus we could not go ahead with the idea that remained in our minds. However, we did not lose heart and kept our trials going. Read the rest of this entry »
Mysore, July 18 (VS&MTY)- A musical programme, ‘Pushpanjali’, ‘Geetanjali’ has been organised in memory of renowned singer late Mohammed Rafi at Jaganmohan Palace on July 20 at 6 pm. Renowned singer Raghavendra Ratnakar, son of cine artiste K.M. Ratnakar, who has been organising the musical programme since three years will present the songs sung by Mohammed Rafi. 
Whenever I listen to certain songs of yesteryears, I am always baffled by the choice of Singers for the particular song where the actors are required to act songs in an unfamiliar voice or without their usual singers. Of course, I am referring to songs mostly from pre-70s especially sixties as post-70, it became a fad for all the heroes to have KK singing for them and in fiftees, almost all Heroes had two or three Singers singing for them. When I listen to the melodious Rafi – Lata duet “Tum Hi Tum Ho Mere Jeevan Me” (Ek Dil Sau Afsane), I wonder what made SJ to select Rafi in place of Mukesh or even Mannadey, two best known play back singers for Raj Kapoor. Similarly, Rafi’s song in Mera Naam Joker. 
Saturday Night Rafi Fever - "Part V" at Mumbai’s Naushad Hall. JULY 31, 1980 is the day of Legendary singer Mohd Rafi leaving us and becoming "IMMORTAL". Rafi Saaheb is easily one of those rarest of rare personality who is remembered each passing day with music lovers and fans visiting his final resting place at Juhu Mosque showering petals n flowers all round the year. 
Neither old age nor the vicissitudes of a long singing career have weakened Mahendra Kapoor’s zest for music. The singer who gave us the soulful “Chalo Ek Baar Phir Se” way back in 1963 is now ready with a collection of Sufi songs. Even at 72, the voice that took high pitch singing to unmatched levels still has a lot to offer. The affable veteran singer says that his sufiana album is something he wanted to do after he had his full in other genres of singing. 
A big debate is going on in various web sites of Rafiji, KK and others regarding who was a better singer. In fact, this sort of discussion was always going on even in our days when we used to heatedly argue as to who was better.
The Eyes which are an integral part of our body are a gift of nature. Eyes can give an expression without words. The portrayal of love, emotions, fear, confusion, mischief, solitude, pain, cruelty, truthfulness, etc can be expressed through eyes. In the golden era of 50s and 60s when love was expressed through sensuality, eyes played an integral part of the characterization of a role. This provided a lot of scope to writers to pen down some of the evergreen writings in the form of songs, dialogs, scripts, etc. 
Veteran actor Shammi Kapoor remembered Rafi Sahab during his felicitation by Aamir Khan at 10th Osian’s-Cinefan Festival of Asian and Arab Cinema. Legendary filmmakers of his era Shakti Samanta, who made hits like ‘Kashmir Ki Kali’ and ‘An Evening in Paris’ with him and Lekh Tandon, who directed him in ‘Professor’, gave him the award. Sammir Dattani, Veteran actress Kamini Kaushal, Shakti Samanta, Lekh Tandon, Satish Shah with wife, Kamal Siddhu, Aditya Raj Kapoor with wife and mother Neilu, Raj Zutshi, Chetan Bhagat and many others arrived for the event. More at 
